


Betting On You

by samsnow



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 12:23:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8890633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samsnow/pseuds/samsnow
Summary: There is another boy in the house.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quackyeon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quackyeon/gifts).



> Loosely based on the 'Bad' MV.

There is another boy in the house. Hoya knows there shouldn’t be – it should just be him, his sister and his parents. But there is a boy upstairs, in the guest bathroom.  
Every night since he first saw him last week, he’s been waiting till everyone is fast asleep and carefully treading down the hallway, the floorboards under his feet all drenched in moonlight. It’s easy not to make a sound on the first floor – everything is smooth and shiny and nothing creaks.  
After climbing the stairs on his hands and feet like a cat, Hoya takes a deep breath. The second floor always smells of clean laundry, aged wood and dust. He thinks it smells a little like one of the torn up books from grandpa’s place.  
Hoya knows he should be scared, walking alone upstairs at night. He is far past his bedtime, too – he should worry about getting caught. He doesn’t know why, though, but he’s not that nervous, considering. He even likes the darkness of the second floor. Night here is quiet and muffled sounds, night is the liquid moon and the gentle protection of shadows, night is slow, and peaceful, and beautiful. Day, on the other hand, is screeches and scratches and shouts in the schoolyard and at home, the strung up silence of words stuck on everyone’s tongues, the harsh blue light everywhere. He feels safe now, his feet scraping the old wooden boards, his hands caressing the half-naked walls.  
He hasn’t told anyone about the boy. He doesn’t know what to make of him yet; the boy always makes him feel strange, like there’s something running beneath his own skin. A secret – that’s what the boy feels like.  
Hoya pushes the bathroom door open. He has to fumble in almost complete darkness before he can switch the light on. The room is small, compact. There are no windows. On his left is the shower, on his right a few mostly empty shelves, and right in front of him is the sink, with a very large mirror above it taking up half the space. Everything is so, so blindingly white.  
For a second, Hoya sees himself in the mirror – only for a second. Now in his stead is a turned-around silhouette, facing away from him and sporting red polka dots pajamas. The boy always wears the same clothes as him, and is about the same height. He doesn’t look like him, though. His face is smaller, his traits more delicate, his eyes almost like a cat’s. He’s beautiful. Like now.  
He’s now facing Hoya, and fixing him with an attentive, almost serious gaze. The boy takes one step forward for every step Hoya does toward him, and he stops when Hoya stops, only two feet away from the mirror. He does it so quickly that Hoya could believe it was indeed his own reflection, if he were only seeing him through the side of his eye. Hoya smiles back. The boy looks kind, really truly kind. He always does when he’s looking directly at Hoya. Hoya hates how, tonight like the previous nights, he can’t bring himself any closer to the mirror.  
He tried to talk to the boy, the first night he saw him, but the boy seems to have no voice. There are no sounds at all coming from the mirror world. The boy doesn’t seem to understand anything Hoya says either. Right now he’s trailing his right hand over the mirror, almost like he’s tracing invisible symbols on it. Hoya watches him, fascinated, and knows he would only have to take a step, just one step, to reach out his hand to the boy’s. His heart starts drumming madly in his chest at the thought.  
The boy has only tried to reach out once, on the second night, and stopped when he saw Hoya panicking. He hasn’t tried again – he always moves carefully. Hoya thinks it’s his role to be trying to approach and make sense of the boy. Instead, he feels like he’s the one being tamed.  
The boy presses an open hand against the mirror, and then curls back his fingers, except for the thumb and index. Hoya blinks a few times, and then gets it. ‘L.’ The boy then points to himself.

***

Hoya’s family move houses only one month after that. They move far. Hoya feels like something is being ripped out of his chest; cries every night like he’s drawing from an infinite supply of tears. He can’t speak his sadness to anyone, but his sister is there for him nonetheless, and his parents seem more serene since his father’s promotion. Their new place is bigger, lighter. It’s nice. So is junior high. He makes some friends. The next year, when autumn comes around and paints the pavements golden and red, Hoya misses L but it’s not a devastating sorrow anymore. Rather, it’s more like an echo of sadness, like a soft rain through a light haze, something cold and warm at the same time.  
Sometimes, at night, he ponders what he could have done, what would have happened if he’d been able to reach out, all those nights he was given the chance. Wonders if they’d really been able to touch at all, and if that would have meant L’s escape from the mirror world or his own escape from this one. Wonders if L ever looks for him in that bathroom once in a while, wonders if he lets anyone else see him.  
He catches himself, from time to time, chasing his reflection on the windows of buses and shops, on the turned-off screen of his cell phone, in living room and bathroom and bedroom mirrors everywhere. His mirror self always looks back pensively, eyebrows and nose slightly scrunched up. L is nowhere to be seen.

***

It takes him almost ten years to go back to his hometown. They have this art project at uni where they have to try to capture their past childhood through photography. He’s twenty-one, now, and he’s largely forgotten about L. Mostly. Sure, he does think of him, sometimes, but the way someone might recall fragments from a dream: L is a blur, a collection of sensations, something that he's sure now has only existed in his childhood imagination.  
Hoya had avoided going back until now, mostly for fear of sadness, but he doesn’t feel as bad as he feared he would once he sets foot in town. He does feel lost. New buildings have sprung up, lots of them, and it takes him a while to find the small alley that leads to his former house. He recognizes it instantly – the pinkish red gate is still here, still as vivid, and he pushes it open. The whole place looks abandoned and out of shape.  
Hoya lets out a small gasp once he opens the front door: inside, the house is even more derelict. The wallpaper is peeling from the wall, what few foreign pieces of furniture there are are strewn about the floor and a heavy layer of dust has settled everywhere like snow.  
It feels like time has stopped in its tracks somehow while he inspects the first floor – the rooms feel so strange now and look so little like the ones in his memories and his Mom's photographs that he doesn’t find his old room right away. It’s empty but for a three-legged chair in the corner. When they were little, his sister and him used to carve symbols, secret symbols, on the floorboards underneath their respective beds. He can only see two faint scratches now that could be remnants of it - two overlapping, entertwining circles - but he doesn't remember what they're supposed to mean.  
He has to kneel from the pressure in his chest when he reaches the second floor. He can’t quite breathe, suddenly. He’s about to panic when the pressure releases, just as abruptly as it came. He rushes to what used to be the guest bathroom. He knows it’s stupid – he’s sure he imagined L when he was little, and even if he didn’t, there’s no way the boy would still be there after all this time.  
Hoya has to use his phone to light up the windowless room, and he almost drops it as soon as the light lands on the mirror. Looking back, dressed in the same washed-out green coat as him, and just as aged as him, is L. Hoya’s entire body suddenly feels like it's made of cotton; he can’t make himself move. L looks just as shocked as him for a few seconds, and then his eyes crinkle, his hands come up to hide his mouth. Hoya hears laughter, and takes a few seconds to realize he’s the one making the sound.  
And then L – very slowly – touches the mirror. This time, Hoya reaches back. 


End file.
